The Matchmaker, the Makeover, and Matteo Costa’s Last Pork Schiacciata
Chapter One — The Last Pork Schiacciata
A romantic story of second chances, meddling aunties, beauty salons, Italian sandwiches, and one guarded man who forgot how to believe in love.
Love did not arrive for Annalisa Sterling with violins, moonlight, or a handsome stranger reaching for her hand across a candlelit table.
Love arrived wearing bangles, red lipstick, a purple head scarf, and yelling across a crowded Italian deli:
“Mary Romano, don’t you dare sell my sandwiches to anybody else!”
That was the first sign Annalisa should have run.
The second sign was when the old woman holding her wrist said, “Your palm says your love life is tired, your spirit is underfed, and your hair needs professional attention.”
Annalisa blinked.
“I came here for matchmaking,” she said.
“And I am matching you,” the woman replied. “First with yourself.”
Her name was Amore Unione, which meant love and union, and she looked exactly like a woman who had been born during a thunderstorm and raised by fortune tellers, opera singers, and nosy Italian grandmothers.
She wore a velvet burgundy shawl, six silver rings, turquoise earrings, and boots with tiny embroidered moons on them. Her perfume smelled like roses, espresso, and trouble.
Annalisa had found her online after one desperate midnight search:
Best matchmaker in Atlanta for women starting over.
She was twenty-nine years old, nearly thirty, and tired of pretending she was fine.
Fine with dating apps.
Fine with men who texted “wyd” like punctuation was too heavy to carry.
Fine with being asked, “So why are you still single?” by people who had somehow confused marriage with proof of moral achievement.
She was not fine.
She was lonely in a polished way. The kind of lonely that wore nice clothes, paid bills on time, smiled at brunch, and went home to a quiet apartment that knew too many of her secrets.
So she came to Amore.
She expected a questionnaire. Maybe a personality test. Maybe a tasteful file of successful men with good shoes and stable retirement accounts.
Instead, Amore had read her palm, pulled three tarot cards, gasped dramatically, and declared:
“Before I find you a man, we must rescue the woman.”
Which was how Annalisa ended up standing inside Romano’s Deli & Bakery, holding her purse like a shield while Amore ordered sandwiches as if negotiating world peace.
“Two pork schiacciata sandwiches,” Amore commanded. “Roasted red peppers, mortadella, burrata, pistachio pesto, extra napkins, and don’t be stingy with the love.”
Behind the counter, Mary Romano laughed. “Amore, you always act like I personally owe you Italy.”
“You do,” Amore said. “After what your cousin did to my niece in 1998.”
Mary rolled her eyes. “That was not my fault.”
“Family is never innocent.”
Annalisa tried not to smile.
For the first time in weeks, she felt something loosen in her chest.
Then the door opened.
A bell chimed.
And every woman in the deli noticed.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, and beautiful in a dangerous, inconvenient way. Dark hair. Dark eyes. A charcoal coat. The kind of jawline that looked carved by someone with excellent taste and emotional problems.
He carried himself like a man who had mastered control because life had once taken something from him without asking.
His gaze landed on Amore.
Then on the sandwich bag.
His expression changed.
“Auntie,” he said, voice low and accusing, “you’re not up to your old tricks again, are you?”
Amore’s smile bloomed like a rose with a knife hidden under it.
“Matteo Costa,” she said, “do not come in here using that tone with me.”
He pointed at the bag. “You took the last pork schiacciata.”
“I purchased it legally.”
“You know I come here every day at this time.”
“Yes,” Amore said sweetly. “I know many things.”
Annalisa looked between them, suddenly aware she had walked into a family drama with excellent bread.
Matteo’s eyes shifted to her.
And stopped.
For one brief second, something flickered across his face.
Interest.
Surprise.
Recognition, maybe.
Then it vanished.
Amore smacked him lightly with the sandwich bag.
“Oh, stop whining, Matteo. Let me introduce you to Ms. Annalisa Sterling.”
She turned with grand ceremony.
“Annalisa, this is my rude but very handsome nephew, Matteo Costa. He is my nephew not by blood but by choice. My sister Fannie is his godmother, and he has been part of our family ever since his dear parents passed.”
Matteo’s jaw tightened.
“Auntie,” he said, “stop telling everyone our family business.”
Amore waved him off. “Family business is how people bond.”
“No,” he said. “It’s how you trap people into emotional conversations.”
Annalisa almost laughed.
Matteo noticed.
His gaze sharpened.
“Since my aunt is spilling all the tea,” he said, “did she tell you her real name is Amore Unione?”
“She did,” Annalisa said.
“Good. Then you should know her name means love and union, which means she probably plans to hook you up with some ugly man and convince you he’s handsome because his birth chart is emotionally available.”
“Matteo!” Amore gasped, though she looked delighted.
He leaned slightly toward Annalisa.
“My advice? Run while your shoes still work.”
Annalisa tilted her head.
“And if I don’t?”
Something in his eyes warmed for half a second.
“Then keep your guard up,” he said. “Auntie is slick.”
Amore clutched her chest. “I am not slick. I am gifted.”
“You are dangerous.”
“Same thing, depending on the lighting.”
Mary Romano slid another wrapped sandwich across the counter. “Lucky for you, Matteo, I saved one in the back.”
Matteo looked relieved.
Then suspicious.
Amore smiled too widely.
His eyes narrowed. “What did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Auntie.”
“I simply told Mary you might need nourishment after destiny slapped you in the face.”
Matteo glanced at Annalisa again.
This time, neither of them looked away quickly enough.
The air shifted.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. But enough.
Enough for Annalisa to feel it.
Enough for Matteo to hate that he felt it too.
He picked up his sandwich.
“Nice meeting you, Annalisa.”
“You too,” she said.
He looked as if he wanted to say something else, then didn’t.
Instead, he turned to Amore.
“Whatever you’re planning, don’t.”
Amore kissed the air beside his cheek.
“Too late.”
By the time he left, Annalisa’s heart was beating in a way that annoyed her.
Amore watched the door close behind him.
Then she handed Annalisa the sandwich bag.
“Well,” she said, “that went beautifully.”
Annalisa stared at her. “That was planned?”
“My dear, I am a matchmaker. Coincidence is just laziness dressed as mystery.”
“I thought you were taking me to a beauty salon.”
“I am.”
“For a makeover.”
“Yes.”
“And Matteo just happened to appear?”
Amore gave her a look.
“Men like Matteo do not happen. They brood into rooms at scheduled times.”
Annalisa laughed despite herself.
But Amore’s face softened.
“He is a good man,” she said quietly. “But grief made a locked house of him.”
Annalisa looked toward the rain-streaked window.
“His parents?”
Amore nodded. “They loved each other deeply. Then they died together in an accident when he was twenty-three. Since then, Matteo believes love is a doorway to loss.”
“That’s sad,” Annalisa said.
“It is also nonsense,” Amore replied. “But pain makes nonsense sound wise.”
At the salon, Amore’s niece turned Annalisa’s curls into glossy waves, painted her nails a deep wine color, and gave her lips a soft rose stain that made her look awake in her own life again.
They ate the sandwiches under hair dryers like queens at a secret banquet.
The pork was crisp at the edges, the burrata creamy, the pistachio pesto rich and bright.
Annalisa closed her eyes after the first bite.
“Oh my goodness.”
Amore smiled.
“See? Love begins with appetite.”
“I thought love began with compatibility.”
“That is what people say when they are afraid of hunger.”
Annalisa looked at herself in the mirror.
For months, maybe years, she had been living like a woman waiting to be chosen by the right life. But now, under warm salon lights, with roasted peppers on her napkin and Amore humming beside her, she wondered if maybe she had been asking the wrong question.
Maybe it was not, Who will love me?
Maybe it was, Who do I become when love enters the room?
Three days later, Amore called.
“I need a favor,” she said.
Annalisa immediately distrusted her.
“What kind of favor?”
“The harmless kind.”
“No such thing with you.”
“I need you to attend a charity dinner with Matteo.”
“No.”
“You did not let me finish.”
“You said Matteo.”
“He needs a date.”
“Why?”
“Because I told his business partners he was seeing someone.”
Annalisa closed her eyes.
“Amore.”
“It was for his own good.”
“That is what villains say.”
“It is also what aunties say. We are cousins.”
And somehow, through guilt, charm, and one promise of free salon treatments for three months, Annalisa agreed.
It was supposed to be fake.
One evening.
One dinner.
One harmless performance.
But Matteo Costa looked at her across the ballroom that night as if she were the one thing he had not prepared himself to survive.
And Annalisa knew, with sudden terrible certainty, that Amore Unione had not arranged a date.
She had lit a match.
And Matteo, no matter how hard he fought it, was already beginning to burn.
